Plant Medicine Integration
“Plant Medicine ceremony is not about chasing lights and colours, but walking a path towards a more expansive and integrated awareness.”
What Plant Medicine Ceremony Integration can Look Like…
Integration is the unifying of all the various aspects of ourselves in order to re-member Wholeness. Integration is not just a word, but a verb; it is an active participation to yoke together the insights gleaned from an expansive experience into your daily life.
Integration of the ceremonial experience is as important as the ceremonial experience itself and is facilitated through the mindful practice of awareness of what is present and arising before, during and after the rituals.
It may be helpful to remember that the work can be transformative on all levels; physical, mental/psychological, emotional, and psycho-spiritual. Meeting integration needs with a holistic perspective can allow and assist in one’s capacity for processing.
You can book an Integration session with Isis after your ceremony as an add-on or here.
Pre Ceremony
Notice what has called you to participate and reflect honestly on the circumstances that have guided you to where you are. Be open to exploring any deeper reasons that may underlie the obvious, this may be a nice time to journal in the days and weeks prior.
Maintain a state of cleanliness of body, mind and spirit, including but not limited to a healthy diet, light exercise and relaxation for at least three days prior to (and after the) ceremony. For complete practical guidelines and contraindications, please see our House Guidelines.
Create rituals and practices to help you best get in touch with yourself before and after the experience, such as meditating, walking, doing yoga, getting counselling, energy or breath work, journaling, delving into artistic expression, finding a stable group of peers and rituals/practices.
Nervous energy before the ceremony is completely natural, and a feeling of apprehension often reminds us to enter the sacred space with respect and humility. Allow nervousness to be a doorway into the heart; a way to find and deepen your prayer.
During Ceremony
Non-attachment is one of our best allies during ceremony. Instead of tightly holding onto intentions, we are best off managing expectations by letting go and surrendering into the process.
Remember the ground; feeling our feet on the earth, awareness centred in the heart, and receiving light, receiving love. Habitually find your prayer inside yourself, as you learn to navigate energetic nuance and perspective.
A useful tool is the RAIN of compassion acronym
Recognise what is happening in the present moment.
Allow sensation to come and go and for life to be completley as it is.
Investigate with gentle and curious attention.
Nurture with a loving presence
It can be an incredible opportunity to rewire neural pathways using this simple framework.
During difficult passages it may be useful to remember these important keys to freedom;
Forgiveness
Acceptance
Allowance
Awareness
Compassion
Humility
Simplicity
Gratitude
Post Ceremony
The post-ceremony integration guidelines can be a long list, let’s start with the most practical;
Ground, nourish yourself with good food, feel your feet on the earth
Wash your clothes, release the energy of the ceremony
Swim and/or shower; cleanse your body with water
Hydrate, coconut water is our favourite way to hydrate post ceremony
R&R, move onwards slowly with patience and awareness.
Relax your mind
Be kind to yourself and normalise, walk in nature, watch a movie, talk with a loved one
Journal; observe the mind and notice stories
Notice patterns and narratives and learn to observe without judgement, the voice in the head
Water positive seeds of change
Expansion & Contraction
During a Plant Medicine ceremony, we expend a large amount of energy and often have little rest or sleep. We may experience a lot of expansion, and the natural reaction is usually a contraction.
This means if you feel low on energy or moody and emotional or like you need to be alone, know that this is can be normal and there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with it or you.
Do not be attached to how you feel post-ceremony, the days following are likely to rebound into a slightly more aware or expanded state than you experienced prior to the ritual.
Integration is a natural process. When left alone, a lot of healing and rebalancing can occur. Practice patience with yourself and others. Practice gratitude for what you have learned, even when some things simply don't make sense. Keep the magic sacred within yourself.
Destabilisation After Ceremony
Take care with how you approach instability and ensure the help of wise friends or trained professionals when and where you can. In other words, don’t navigate it alone. Talk with the facilitator, they should always make themselves available to support you in navigating a destabilising experience.
Integration’s opposites are separation, segregation, and fragmentation. As if things were drifting apart and the space between is a place of free-fall. This can lead to confusion, anxiety, depression, disassociation and relational difficulties. Not perceiving the outside world in a regular way comes from the destabilisation of the mind and the result is more destabilisation.
Using things like Ayahuasca or even meditation as a replacement for the psychological work of traditional therapies or long-term management of psychiatric illness is a form of Spiritual Bypassing that has its perils and can magnify the suffering in the individual and others.
It is always a good moment to think positively of the profession of psychiatry and psychotherapy and to become confident to seek out sophisticated therapists who are sensitive to the spiritual work but not in collusion with the underpinnings of magical thinking, conspiratorial values or spiritual bypassing.
Take your foot off the accelerator. If things become intense in the practice, practice moderation and stop ensuing with intensity. That means taking a break from all the disciplines and practices and allowing yourself time to metabolise.
One particular way to metabolise intense experience or to calm internal calamity is to normalise. Normalisation means to stop digging the well so deep, stop investigating, analysing and seeking and learn to relax. Watch a movie, go to a cafe with old friends and talk about mundane things. Smile at strangers, play with your pet or spend quality time with family. Offset the destabilising factors by slowing down and focusing on one task at a time.
We have a list of Psychologists specialising in Entheogenic Integration. Please contact us for recommendations.
In Summary…
Entheogenic rituals are not about chasing lights and colours but walking a path towards a more expansive and integrated awareness. Sometimes the lessons can be difficult, and it may be challenging to face aspects of ourselves that we do not wish to see. It could be rightly said that the real work begins after the Work. If we do not take it upon ourselves to integrate that which we have learned we may be wasting precious opportunities for personal discovery and realisation. So, be kind to your mind, it is all you have in the experience of this life.
Ten Virtues for a Harmonious Life
1: The Earth is your mother, care for her
2: Honour your ancestors through your actions
3: Open your heart and soul to the Great Spirit
4: All life is Sacred, treat all beings with respect
5: Take from the Earth what is needed and nothing more
6: Put the good of all before your own self-interest
7: Give constant thanks for each new day
8: Speak the truth, but only of the good in others
9: Follow the rhythms of nature, rise and retire with the sun
10: Enjoy life’s journey but leave no tracks behind
11: Don’t take it so seriously!